Arnside Contractors Win Appeal
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A N appeal by E. Nelson and Sons, I-1 haulage contractors, of Arnside, Westmorland, against the refusal of the Northern Licensing Authority to vary their ordinary A licence by the addition of five vehicles was allowed by the Transport Tribunal in London last week. The British Transport Commission were the only objectors.
Mr. T. H. Campbell Wardlaw, for the appellants, said that if the application had been granted a contract A licence held by the firm in respect of a contract with the Cape Asbestos Co., Ltd., would have been surrendered. The contract, which had been held_ since 1955. was originally for one vehicle, but was increased to five in 1957. From then, until the beginning of this year, the five vehicles were operating for Cape Asbestos who produced material used in the manufacture of asbestos products at Kentmere, Westmorland.
A subsidiary company, Cape Building Products, Ltd., at Uxbridge, were using the material to manufacture asbestos boards and these were being carried north by the appellants' vehicles. Their vehicles were also being used to carry waste material from an associate company in Glasgow to Kentmere.
New Subsidiary At the end of 1960 the Cape Asbestos Co. formed a new subsidiary, called the Cape Insulation and Asbestos Co., which took over the Kentmere works. Because of this, doubts arose as to the legality of the appellants' position in continuing operations for the Cape Asbestos Co. under the terms of their contract A licence. The application for the variation was submitted for this reason.
The Cape Asbestos Co. ceased to be a manufacturing company on January 1 this year. The appellants were merely seeking to put their house in order.
Mr. J. M. Timmons, for the British Transport Commission, said that if the sole purpose of the appellants was to regularize their position, there was no justification for them to have anything more than would regularize it.
The Tribunal president, Sir Hubert Hull, said that in the absence of any evidence from anyone contending that they could do this work, or of any evidence that there would be excessive abstraction, the appeal seemed a plain case for the granting of the licence, so that the five vehicles could properly continue to do the work they had been doing up to the end of last year.
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